


in this desert land i know some rain must fall

by amillionsmiles



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, just take it away !!!, this is so sappy oh my god !!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amillionsmiles/pseuds/amillionsmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people, like rain, are worth waiting for.</p><p>// or: Keith leaves, and Keith returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this desert land i know some rain must fall

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В краю пустынном дождь пройдёт однажды](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227184) by [timmy_failure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timmy_failure/pseuds/timmy_failure)



> also known as "how many space/nature metaphors can I shove into a fic???"
> 
> I've been thinking about long distance Shiro -> Keith for a long time, and this was the result. Title taken from Vienna Teng's song "Shine"

In the mornings, Shiro walks.

He’s been called many things in his lifetime: the Garrison’s golden boy, pilot of the Kerberos mission, Galran prisoner, champion, paladin.  _Creature of habit_ is just another addition to the list.

So many routines.  At the Garrison, it had been lectures and simulations, his remaining time divided between the gym and his room.  As he and the Holts traveled through space, it was an endless cycle of _systems check, eat, exercise, sleep_.  In captivity, it became a single directive: _survive._  

And now, back on Earth, it is this: the bell chiming as Shiro enters the diner.  The glistening neck of a soda bottle set in front of him on the counter, the sleepy hum of the television in the background.  Afterwards, a trip to the corner bakery. Arriving home just in time to answer a call from his mother as he sifts through his mail.  There’s a heavier envelope, addressed to him with a familiar scrawl, and Shiro breaks the seal, a stack of photos sliding out onto the counter.

Most people say _I miss you_ or _wish you were here._ Keith, meanwhile, sends him pictures of crowded market streets and quaint countryside houses, bright flags snapping in the wind and blurry gray mornings.  A bird perched on a busted lamppost, silhouetted against a bruised sky.

“Shiro? Are you there?” his mother asks.

“Yeah.” He cradles the phone against his cheek, holds a photo up to the light filtering into his kitchen, lets his smile linger.  “I’m right here.”

 

*

 

Allura had needed them to be soldiers.  Saviors.  Earth took them back and wanted them to be answers:

_Where were you, for the last five years?_

_You mean to tell us that you traveled to a star system that has yet to be discovered by our scientists?_

_These…plants that you’ve brought back, they’re—_

**_A gift, from an alien race._ **

_Not the same ones who abducted you?_

**_No, not the same._ **

It wasn’t quite a hero’s welcome, because no one understood the kind of peril Earth had been spared.  The Galra had been at the threshold, all those years ago—Kerberos wasn’t far, in the grand scheme of things—but, inexplicably, they’d turned away, and by the time their attentions had returned, Voltron had been ready to hold them at bay.

And so it went. They answered questions.  Handed the foreign plants and extraterrestrial data over to the scientists for study.  Tried to adjust to the new weight on their shoulders: the pressure of an atmosphere they’d gone without for years, the scrutiny of a world that didn’t quite believe them.

Pidge had a mother who had been waiting for too long.

Lance had an ocean of a family to wade through, the waves of Varadero lapping at his heels, beckoning him home.

Hunk had shrimp steaming on a grill, pineapple in the air, the warmth of a sunrise he’d almost forgotten.

Keith had miles of earth and an engine singing beneath him.

And Shiro had this: floorboards that squeaked gently under his footsteps, when he’d grown used to the clang of boots on the Castle of Lions’ metal floors. A windowsill lined with plants.  A cactus he kept by his bedside, because it reminded him that some people, like rain, were worth waiting for.

 

*

 

“Come in, Shiro.”  The doctor’s voice is warm, the lab lights bright overhead as Shiro shrugs out of his shirt, resting his prosthetic arm on the table in full display, palm facing upward.

“Make a fist.”

Shiro does.

“No pain?”

“No.”

“Good.”

They run tests.  Scanners and sensors, temperature readings, _do you think you can slice through that cement block there, will your arm power up automatically under stress?_  

The doctors and scientists don’t shy away from the purple glow.  They marvel over his bionic arm’s integration with his system, talk about modifications and applications to modern science.  Here on Earth, it’s not about what his Galra tech did—the dull roar of a crowd, yellow eyes, _champion_ —it’s about what it can do.

It’s the difference between nights of cold sweat and the quieter dreams he has now, where his fingers twitch not for a weapon, or a throat, but only to recall the phantom touch of someone else’s hand. 

 

*

 

“He’d drop everything and come back, you know,” Pidge said once, when she was visiting to drop off a pie her mother had baked and caught sight of the postcards stuck to the fridge.  “If you asked.”

Shiro knew it, in the same way he knew that a thread, once pulled, could all too quickly become a tether.

“That’s why I don’t.”

 

*

 

The universe had needed them to be its sword and shield.

And now, in the aftermath, they were weapons without a war.  Each of them needed to be reforged, in their own way.

Shiro had spent so long locked in an internal struggle that it was easy for him to focus inwards, to reflect and rebuild from there.  And it wasn’t that Keith wasn’t capable of the same—it just wasn’t his way.  Keith needed something to pit himself against: a sparring partner, the Galra empire, gravity.

“We’ve seen whole worlds out there,” Keith said, before he left.  “Doesn’t it seem like we should see all we can of this one?”

It was more an explanation than an invitation.  Their Garrison days, the year lost to Kerberos, five years of fighting through the galaxy side by side—Keith recognized Shiro’s readiness to stay, just as Shiro recognized Keith’s urge to see more, do more, _go._

They understood each other.  That was the one thing time and distance had not, _would_ not change.

_*_

 

Evening comes, and with it the scent of a storm.

The cactus by his bedside seems to swell with this knowledge, its tiny spikes softening in the moonlight, faint white hairs on a green pincushion.  Shiro takes it as a sign, pulling on his jacket and boots, the hairs at the back of his neck raised as he rides into the desert.  Overhead, the clouds hang, heavy as a held breath.

A little ways from town is a monument—or an eyesore, depending on whom you talk to.  Part of a highway beautification process, it had gone up eight months ago.

(“Why would you build a water slide in the middle of a desert?” asked Lance when he came to visit.

“It’s not a water slide, it’s a sculpture,” Shiro said.  “It’s called _Electric Eel._ ”

“Riiiight,” said Lance, in a tone that distinctly conveyed _not impressed._ )

Truthfully, for most of the day _Electric Eel_ does look like a glorified water slide, metal and clear plastic baking under the desert sun.  At night, though, it becomes a tangled beacon of light, all sinuous curves, its blue glow reminiscent of one of Coran’s planet projections or Allura’s eyes.

Tonight, Shiro drives straight toward it, headlights dimming as he nears the shape at its base.

There’s a spot by Shiro’s ribs that remembers his crash-landing in the desert, all those years ago.  It’s the same spot that throbs now at the sight of the dark figure that turns toward him, backlit by the sculpture’s neon glow.

“You cut your hair” is the first thing Shiro says to Keith, after a year.

Keith reaches up, fingers running through the shorter strands at the base of his head.  His gaze is long, and thoughtful, and the two of them stand there, drinking each other in. 

“This is new,” Keith finally says, turning back to the monstrosity towering over them.

Shiro steps forward so that they’re in line with each other, shoulders not quite touching.  “Yeah.  Lance calls it ‘the electric slide.’”   

“It looks like how a wormhole feels,” says Keith, and the observation is so sudden and surprisingly poetic that Shiro can’t help the burst of laughter that erupts from his chest.  

“Yeah.  It does, doesn’t it?” and then they’re relaxing, finally, into each other, shoulders pressed together, solid as if they’ve stood this way all their life.  Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro studies Keith’s upturned face, rewriting his map of Keith’s features.  There’s a new cluster of freckles by Keith’s right eye, a faint scratch against the side of his chin.      

“I told the others I’d be here tomorrow,” Keith eventually starts, hesitant.  “I thought…it’d be nice, to get everyone together again.”

“So you were going to surprise me.”

“Something like that.”

“How long are you in town for?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you.”  Keith reaches for the edge of Shiro’s jacket, holds fast.  “I’m staying.”

Shiro’s breath hitches, and in that moment he thinks that maybe _Electric Eel_ has something to do with what his heart becomes around Keith: a tangled, glowing thing. 

“While I was gone,” Keith is saying, his brow furrowed as he tries to assemble his thoughts, “I thought a lot about how it felt, being part of Voltron.  I got used to it, you know?  All that noise—you, Hunk, Pidge, Lance, Red.  And then we came back and it was all _quiet_ all of a sudden and it…threw me off.  I think I needed time to figure out who to be, without anyone else’s voice in my head.”

“But once I knew that,” he continues, raising his eyes and locking them with Shiro's, “the rest was easy.”

Shiro reaches for the hand Keith has on his jacket, uses it to tug him closer until his nose is buried in Keith’s hair.  Keith snorts, the sound muffled against Shiro’s shoulder, but then he says, _“Shiro,”_ and it’s an offering ( _if you’ll have it_ ), an apology ( _I didn’t mean to stay away for so long_ ), a question ( _what do we do now?)._

“Keith,” he says, and it sounds like _of course_ and _you came back_ and _anything, everything._

In the distance, a crackle of lightning.

Keith casts a glance skyward and pulls back.  Shiro doesn’t mourn the loss too much.

They have plenty of time, after all.

In front of him, Keith smirks, silvered and shadowed.

“Been a while since we’ve raced,” he calls over his shoulder, already running to his bike and swinging one leg over it, the rev of his engine an echo of the thunderous rumble overhead.  He pauses only once, to make sure that Shiro is mounted and ready to take on his challenge.

And then he’s off, the desert sand glowing like stardust in his wake, and Shiro tears after him, electric with the knowledge that Keith is the one storm he will always chase, will always welcome with open arms. 

Behind them, the first drop of rain hits the ground.


End file.
